


Just another night at Marble

by exceptionallyunfortunate



Category: AI: The Somnium Files (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Canon Compliant, Drunken Kissing, Extended Scene, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, No Spoilers, POV First Person, Pre-Canon, SyuurAI (AI: The Somnium FIles)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25306045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exceptionallyunfortunate/pseuds/exceptionallyunfortunate
Summary: Hey, Date. Have you ever seen a dead body?While digging for information at Marble on November 4, 2019 (SyuurAI), Date remembers an old conversation he once had there with his best friend Renju. This fic elaborates on what happened on that night, long before the case of the New Cyclops Killer—namely, one very emotional first kiss between two drunk friends.
Relationships: Date Kaname/Okiura Renju
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	Just another night at Marble

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is extremely canon-compliant and contains the entirety of the dialogue and text from the flashback scene based on the English dub. If the pacing seems weird, blame that—I did try to take liberties wherever possible to get Date’s side in and make it seem more like a chat real people would actually have. The story is told from Date’s first-person POV.
> 
> This work contains no major spoilers for _AI: The Somnium Files_ other than the fact that it's literally a flashback scene from the game. There are descriptions of elder death/disguised murder, but they’re canonical, which is why I’ve chosen not to use the archive warning for depictions of violence. None of the other warnings apply.
> 
> Mama and Aiba are small cameos in this fic (and Date is only a _little_ bit mean about Mama). In-game, memory!Date’s sprite is shown to have Aiba, but she doesn’t say anything during the scene and frankly I can’t be arsed to write all her potential commentary in, so she’s doing her own thing in electric sheep world while Date has his boy’s night out. This is very much a story about Date and Renju.
> 
> The ending Author’s Note has sexual references.

In one teetering motion, I tipped my entire body back, letting the final trickle of amber pour out of the glass and down my throat. The blurry haze that prickled across my body masked the burn of the alcohol as I swallowed. Whether it had been good bourbon or not, I wouldn’t have been able to say… though given how far along we were into the night, Mama had probably long switched to topping us off with the cheap stuff. Either way was fine by me. I leaned my weight forwards again and slammed the drained glass down on the counter, a little harder than I’d intended to. But that was okay—Mama was used to the disappearance of my finer motor skills on nights like those. A contented sigh slipped out from my lips, followed by a rather impressive belch.

“Hey, Date,” came Renju’s voice to my right. I rolled my head around a few times, trying to remember how necks worked, then managed to tilt in his direction so I could look right at him.

Even two fingers’ worth further along than I was, he still looked pristine sitting next to me. His straw-colored bangs cut tidily across his forehead, no doubt maintained by an expensive hairdresser. The dim purple light of the bar made his skin look smooth and even, but that wasn’t really much of a change from how he usually looked. Even his open shirt collar was artfully rumpled to show off his sharp collarbone. But the usual level of confidence he had even while drunk seemed to be missing. He stared at me with sad eyes.

“Have you ever seen a dead body?”

_A red bobby?_ I blinked once and he shifted slightly, leaning one elbow against the counter. We were obviously both wasted, yet he looked so much more composed than I did with his white suit jacket and perfect posture. I straightened on my stool to match him, trying not to look too muddled while I decoded what he was saying.

“You’re a policeman,” he continued softly. “I don’t know what department, but I assume you aren’t handing out traffic tickets.” He turned to touch his chin to his hand, fixing his gaze behind the bar. “So how about it?”

I didn’t answer. ABIS wasn’t public knowledge and I had a responsibility not to blab about it. If Aiba had been listening in, she would have given me a whole lecture about it. Luckily, she figured out pretty quickly that me plus alcohol wasn’t her kind of scene. It worked out for me—I got to get trashed with Renju and Shoko and Reika, and Aiba got to do… whatever it is that an AI with links to every database on the internet likes to do. Probably run complex simulations about bug migration.

Suppressing a hiccup, I turned the question around on him. “What about you?”

“Me?” His eyebrows furrowed slightly. “Well yeah.”

I held back a small ping of surprise as the weight of our chat and his casual response sunk in. _Renju’s seen a dead body?_ I tried to remember if he had ever mentioned dead parents or relatives he might have walked in on.

He took a slow sip from his glass, ice tinkling. His expression hardened and when he spoke again, his voice was tinged with a new edge. “Not just one. Countless bodies.”

My gaze must have been pretty intense as I studied his face, but I continued to hold my tongue—the moment had turned critical and I knew I wasn’t dealing with some story about a dead relative. I would have to tread carefully. _What has this guy gotten caught up in?_

Renju turned back to me with a distant look in his sparkling brown eyes. “When I was in high school, I had a pretty crazy job.” A faint smile touched his lips. “You know the Kumakura gang?”

I nodded and he continued. “I was hooked up to one of their phone fraud scams.” He twisted away again. “I just had to go collect the money from drop points and give it to the Kumakuras. It was an easy job. Eventually, I became friends with the higher-ups. They started taking me with them on jobs.”

Before I could stop myself, my quick investigative reflexes took over and a question tumbled out of my lips. “What jobs?”

His gaze returned to mine, holding me there as he answered matter-of-factly. “The target was always an elderly person from the country with no family. Elderly folk who owned a lot of land, you know?” A little more wistfully, he added, “they live every day in loneliness and desperation. You just have to be nice to them. That’s all it takes.”

As he spoke, eyes hardened. “Guys would get to know the old people, and they would set up an adoption process.” The words came tumbling out faster, more urgently, less composed. “After that… You just have to get them really drunk, throw them in the tub full of hot water… And they pass. Just like that.”

His voice had begun to crack, but he couldn’t seem to stop. I felt queasy. His words were sickening but it was clear he was too far gone to hold them back. “Heart attack, brain hemorrhage, or they simply go to sleep and drown.” At that, his eyes pulled away again. “The police almost never investigate it,” he noted bitterly. “It always looked natural, like they died of old age. So the adopted gang members would inherit the land. Then we sell it and make massive profits.”

I waited, teeth clenched tightly, unsure how to respond to my friend’s horrible confession. But Renju seemed not to noticed, and he continued without a hitch.

“I watched a lot of people get killed like that. And I’ve seen journalists get killed for getting too close to the truth. So, I… I…” He faltered.

I could only stare unblinkingly, hoping my face wasn’t giving too many of my emotions away. I swallowed hard once and willed my racing mind into calculated numbness. _It’s too risky to say the wrong thing_ , I reminded myself, concentrating hard through my alcohol-induced haziness. _Let him speak._

He buried his face in his hand, shaking his head furiously from side to side to clear it, letting out a quite groan. “Why am I telling you all this?” he seethed.

_Keep steady_ , I told myself. Anything my foggy brain came up with would make the situation worse.

The man sighed and regained his self-control, no doubt fighting just as hard as I was. His gentler side returned and he gazed at me with the kind look I knew was reserved only for close friends. “Are you going to arrest me?” he asked casually.

I let my eyes dart hurriedly away so I wouldn’t be drawn in by that warm stare; I needed all my wits about me to stop myself from saying something stupid out of drunken irrationality. I spotted my glass on the counter, refilled with more amber liquid at some point by a passive but twinkly-eyed Mama behind the bar. Her fingers rubbed at a dried bonito like usual, but I knew she was listening carefully, no doubt soaking up all the juicy details of Renju’s involvement with a yakuza family and filing them away into her mental catalogue underground goings-ons. _It’s why she’s the best informant around,_ I mused, gratefully taking a sip of the fresh bourbon, glad for the excuse not to answer the question at hand.

I didn’t say anything for a while—just let the smooth spice burn on my tongue while I ran the night’s conversation through my mind again.

It already felt like a completely different evening than the one that had begun with a classic Mama joke about making the tips touch. It wasn’t unusual for Renju to spring a bar night on me out of the blue, so I couldn’t tell if his confession had been premeditated or if it had popped up out of nowhere. Sometimes our chats at Marble did turn serious, like the night I convinced him to let Mizuki live with me, or the time we had to apologize to Mama for taking our jokes too far. Most of the time, though, we just drank ourselves senseless like normal studs with healthy relationships to drugs and emotions—the kind of fun that Aiba would protest. But Aiba was buried deep in the inner workings of the Wadjet System, which meant this “Date’s night” was up to me to handle.

I really did want nothing more than to slip back into our usual perverted drunken banter and pissing contests.

Finally, I settled on a suitable question. “You didn’t do it yourself, right?”

His eyes gave a quick flash of relief. “No,” he replied carefully, but I could still detect a stutter, even though my wistful haziness. “I was always the lookout.”

His head dropped and suddenly the corners of his mouth were trembling. His voice quavered wildly as he forced out his shameful words. “But still… Date, I…”

_Fuck, he’s crying!_

Tears fell to the counter, unending. My heart thumped painfully against my chest, the space between each one drawing out longer and longer even though it must have been racing. Time seemed to slow to an imperceptible crawl as I stared at my best friend, barely knowing what to feel let alone what to say. My mind filled with images of old people being taken by surprise, dying… but I swatted each one away, refusing to connect them to the reality of the broken man sobbing before me. I desperately hoped that Mama might say something charming, but she chose that moment to silently extract herself and had disappeared into the kitchen with a delicacy I didn’t know she was capable of. My brain buzzed fiercely, but the cloud of alcohol started to recede ever so slightly while the seconds ticked on. Exhaustion racked my body as I waited for Renju to pull himself together. Eventually his tears did slow, but he just kept staring at nothing, lips red and wavering.

We didn’t say another word until the ice in the glass had melted to nothing. By then, I had memorized every tired line on his face and could point out each of the six greys stealthily hidden among his fine, golden hair. I knew the veins on the back of his hands better than my own and I felt sure I could pick out the line of his jaw in a crowd. There was no use waiting any longer—I was just prolonging his agony by letting him wallow. _I’d be a bad friend if I didn’t do something for this poor guy_ , I mentally sighed.

“Come on,” I whispered, my voice sticking a little with dehydration. “I’ll take you home.” The prospect of going to bed and escaping this situation was extremely alluring to me.

Although my drunken haze hadn’t completely lifted, I had no problem navigating my hand to Renju’s elbow. He flinched and try to pull away, but I managed to catch his hand in mine at the last second. I gripped it firmly and lay my other hand on his knee to root him to his stool. He froze, staring at me with uncharacteristic anxiety on his features.

“Date…” His voice was faint, his tone pleading, his fingers stiff in mine. “Are you going to report me?”

“What?” I shook my head. Any serious consideration that I had given the possibility had fled my mind the second I saw those tears. “No. Renju, don’t be ridiculous, you were in high school and you didn’t—”

But before I knew what was happening, Renju’s free hand had shot up to grab my face and he was standing on the lower rung of his stool, hovering over me… kissing me. Fiercely. With firm lips that tasted like sweet bourbon. With one hand holding mine and another sweaty palm softly pressed against my cheek.

My body let out an involuntary sigh that he swallowed eagerly. Fervently. His tongue took advantage of the gap between my lips and just barely broached them, tickling the sensitive skin just inside. My hand had been knocked off his knee and rested gently against the firmness of his thigh under soft, expensive fabric. The hand on my face drifted through my hair and found a perch against the base of my skull, coaxing me in closer. My vision went dark and I couldn’t tell if my eyes were closed or if my brain had simply ceased to function. The entire universe narrowed to our four points of contact, stifling and slick and unlike anything other experience within my short memory. Hot blood rushed across every inch of my skin as I forgot how to breathe, mind flooded with a barrage of sensations. A singular thought echoed through my skull: _Renju_.

The kiss ended after what felt like long minutes but must have only been the span of a dozen fluttering heartbeats. Its instigator pulled away, his damp eyes slow to flicker open then closed again as his raspy breaths drifted across my skin. My spinning head reminded me that I also needed to breathe, and my newly freed lips drew in a mouthful of air that felt surprisingly cold inside my chest. The spinning slowed, but I still felt unsteady on my stool. As I tottered, Renju settled back onto his own seat, pulling his hands away to lay them on the counter. Then he slumped and let his head drop onto his arms.

I blinked, the sudden loss of warmth in my hands and against my neck feeling like a slap. Thoughts were impossible. In the dim glow of purple light and the low murmur of radio music, amidst the musky smells of booze, sweat, and Mama’s perfume, all I could sense was the circulation of air in and out from my parted lips and the gentle rise and fall of my best friend’s back as he too breathed in the scents of Marble and me.

Renju’s face lay slack, all the haggardness of the night’s conversation gone from his expression. His soft eyelids rested peacefully, closed over the gold-flecked eyes that always made me feel normal whenever being a mystery person got to be too much. Those same eyes which could turn so cool and calculating towards the world, but which melted into gentle trust when it was just the two of us in a dingy bar. Our nights losing ourselves at the bottom of shared bottles usually alternated between climaxes of shitfaced idiocy and testosterone-fueled brawls, and yet that night… something had broken Renju all the way to what must have been his most guarded secrets. Something had made him vulnerable. For me. _About_ me.

_Renju..._ I thought woozily, _how long…?_

It was a tiny snore that knocked me back to my senses. A thin dribble of drool was sneaking past his rosy lips. I felt a warm rush of fond annoyance as my senses returned— _leave it to this asshole to pass out after a move like that._ I didn’t need my professional skills as an investigator to fish Renju’s wallet out from his jacket pocket and slap a few thousand yen on the counter to cover the bottle of bourbon we had decimated.

“Come on, you moron, I’m taking you home.” I stood and threaded my arms around his lean torso, pulling him to his feet and jostling him into consciousness. Reluctantly, Renju shuffled along in compliance, leaning heavily against me, head bobbing with the threat of another nap. The door jangled as it opened and I caught a glimpse of Mama’s tender smile by the kitchen before it closed. With a little more effort, I finally managed to unceremoniously dump Renju in the passenger’s seat, where his head lolled and his snoring resumed.

Seated beside him, I sighed. The desire to slip into a drug-aided coma was contagious. I tapped my left eyeball twice. _“Hey Aiba,”_ I mentally called out, sinking into the leather of my car seat and letting my human eye drift shut. _“We’re headed home, I need you to drive.”_

The dashboard flashed on as she obediently took control of the car and smoothly maneuvered it onto the road. The lights of the city flew by against the dark backdrop of the night sky in a hypnotic woosh of wind. Everything was calm and blissfully hazy—perfect for sinking into exhausted unconsciousness. I reached across the seat and found Renju’s hand. _Is he going to remember any of this in the morning?_ I wondered tiredly. _…Am I?_

The world faded away into darkness…

…Except for a holographic overlay of the heated kiss which blossomed into view, startling me awake again. With the perfectly calculated sly innocence that only an audacious AI could have, Aiba let her casual musing ring through my head: _“it seems you had a good date with Renju. Don’t think I don’t keep a close eye on your vital signs, Date.”_

**Author's Note:**

> My one Word of God is that our boys both have massive cases of whiskey dick and couldn’t pop boners that night if they’d tried. Did they get horny? Did either of them remember afterwards? Did they go home together or did they go to their separate homes? Has Renju been hiding feelings for Date, or was the kiss just a drunken, spur-of-the-moment reflex with no long-term desire behind it? Does Date ever have feelings for Renju? _You decide._


End file.
